T r e a d Softly... YOU MIGHT TRIP ON TEXT


Saturday, December 12, 2015

yesterday on the terrace as night fed small but sparkling stars,
a mighty cloud formation of lush lips parted in a sigh;
but even as i looked they transformed, mutated,
the upper lip became an eagle with spreading wings,
the lower, a struggling tiger clutched in its talons.
i watched in wonder, believing my eyes this time
only because, after the floods last week, i know

these clouds are capable of anything.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

P A R I S

lovers threw passion to the winds
and artists snatched colours from the seine
drowning unhurried lives in love and fame;
remember then those stories you weaved
rise, paris, and regain what you lived for then...

Friday, July 17, 2015

and this post. 
last week's literary review for the sunday herald (deccan herald):



Parisian war saga

SHREEKUMAR VARMA, July 12, 2015

Lead review

Modiano has been called the poet of the Occupation. Both these novellas (part of an Occupation trilogy) are set during the Second World War when Paris was occupied and life was on the edge — a dizzy whirl of danger, booze, languor and apathetic sex; and teetering on the middle rungs of a dubious social ladder the characters are trying to climb, not always with an idea of where they’re going or in what condition they’ll reach. The line of the law is thin and ambiguous. Prostitution, gun-running, drugs and sordid power games are the norm.

Now that he’s Nobel Laureate 2014, Modiano is accessible enough to show the world why he should be viewed as a voice to be heard beyond French literature. Aptly translated, the books could do with another stint of proofreading.

Originally published in 1969, The Night Watch is about a man who steps nimbly on both sides of the divide — the Resistance as well as the French Gestapo. Until he sort of oversteps. He is the enfant terrible of the Resistance hunted by the police, and in a Modiano overturn, is set to become his own hunter.

The book begins with a typical (now that I’ve read both the books) Modiano scene of putrid decadence, men with sunken cheeks and “puff bloated” bags under the eyes, women whose make-up “begins to crack”. Members of the police are planning a crackdown on the Resistance even as the garishly dressed bitterati around them drink, dance and flirt with vapid disenchantment.

And pathetically talk of trying to palm off their black market wares. Outside their walls, everything is scarce and expensive, life is a struggle. Listening to them, we know why. Our protagonist is already on the crest of his double game. As these men and women drag on with their sticky enjoyments, corrupt members of the Gestapo are seeking crucial names from him. Brutality meets bored promiscuity. Everything happens in the same place, the bizarre is woven into Modiano’s poetry of loss and memory. 

The narrator has sent his mother to safety in Lausanne, there’s no saying what awaits him. He plans to join her for a better life, though changing tracks at this stage doesn’t look likely. He talks of protecting two people, a red-haired giant and a “tiny little slip of a girl” (who could also be an old lady). He imagines leaving them on their own, betraying their trust. “But nothing compares to the infinite relief you feel as the body goes limp and slowly sinks. This is as true of water torture as it is of the kind of betrayal that involves abandoning someone in the night when you have promised to return.”

What’s the point of such a life? You’re neither here nor there, belong to no one, follow a relentless path of inevitability that gives you no joy at all. The true depth of existential angst! “...you have gained nothing in this life but the whirlwind you let yourself be caught up in.” He doesn’t really know the truth of people around him. Or of himself either. Is he double agent? Triple agent? There’s a trick of presenting images, facts and memories that blow away like bubbles or fade out to reappear elsewhere in barely recognisable form. The final drive through Paris is departure in many ways.

In a sense the second book, Ring Roads, balances out the overall rootlessness of the first. Here, the protagonist searches for and finds his father among a group of (once again decadent) people surviving on the ills of society, steeped in anti-Semitism, people who make use of his father, abuse him openly and would like to see him ultimately destroyed.

The son doesn’t disclose his identity but follows him like a shadow, watching as his father gets closer to people who want him destroyed. (“I cannot remember a single word we said…A father and son probably have little to say to each other.”) And this is the same father who once tried (or didn’t) to push him under a speeding train!

Nevertheless, the son is prepared to give up his life for him. When the man is beaten up, he rushes forward, disclosing his identity when he could have quietly walked away. This steadfastness is probably a given in both protagonists, though one emerges as a hero to our jaded reader’s eye because of his stated filial goal, and the other falls because of the amoral place he inhabits. 

The straightforward descriptions are sometimes more surreal than images that have you blinking through the mist. This is Modiano. He works like an illusionist only to bring you an abstract truth, to give you the essence of time, character. Morality surfaces in the most immoral soil. Happiness is never where you think it is. Vivid descriptions turn out to be the woodwork of an impermanent structure. All that you think is simple narrative in Modiano is thus grist for your imagination long after you’ve set aside the books.


The Night Watch, Ring Roads
Patrick Modiano
Bloomsbury
2015, pp 130, 146, Rs 299 each

friday children's story for young world, the hindu, july 17, 2015



Holiday with witch No. 16


((PLEASE CLICK ON MY NAME TO READ OTHER STORIES IN THE HINDU'S YOUNG WORLD)
It was dark when they reached the traveller’s bungalow. Hamsini’s mother looked glum. Hamsini had grumbled throughout the drive that her butter biscuits were missing. And her father kept complaining because she hadn’t packed his favourite green T-shirt.
 “We only go for a holiday once a year,” her mother pleaded, “at least let’s be happy now.”
The traveller’s bungalow was old and falling to pieces. There was nothing else for miles around. Hamsini and her father complained in chorus. The caretaker was equally old.
Time to unwind
“Nice to see human beings in this place,” he said. He switched on the lights. “It’s as bright as sunlight!” said her mother happily.
Later, Hamsini sat reading her favourite book, The Day The Painting Came Alive. Suddenly she felt the lights getting even brighter!
Curiously, she got up and examined the switchboard. All the plug-holes had plugs that went nowhere at all.
“Strange!” she said. As she was about to pull out a plug, the old caretaker appeared from nowhere at all. “Please don’t do that! Never pull a plug in this house!”
That made Hamsini even more determined. When he’d left, she started pulling at it. The plug was stuck hard. She began to sweat. Finally, it came out in her hand. There was a terrific Whoosh! Thick blue smoke rushed from the plug-hole. Hamsini moved back in horror. The smoke curled and twisted itself into weird shapes. It became thicker and thicker until finally a large blue woman, old, bent and dried-up, stood before her. Her nose was half the size of her face. Hamsini stifled a scream.
She took a huge breath and said, “Who-who-who are you-you-you---”
The old blue woman said, “I’m the lady from Witchboard No. 16.” Her voice sounded exactly like the wind that whistled through the window blinds in her father’s study.
“You can call me Witch No. 16.”
Hamsini stared at her in a daze.
The old woman said urgently, “Let’s go out for a while. I want to feel the fresh air! I’ve only half an hour before getting back.”
The little girl and the old woman slipped out through the front door. There was a happy cackle.
“I’m free! I’m free!” Witch No. 16 jumped and gamboled like a young lamb.
“You don’t look so old now,” said Hamsini.
“Because I’m fully charged!” the witch screeched.
She said there were 130 witches in the house, all living in plug-holes. “This house is the Witchboard Headquarters,” she explained. “It’s lonely and far away from TV satellite dishes and mobile phone towers, so we are left undisturbed by all those foul things in our air-waves. Every time someone visits, the caretaker allows one witch at a time to come out and taste the fresh air.”
Hamsini said, “But the old man said not to pull the plugs!”
“And did you listen?” chortled the witch. “He knows little girls!”
After a while, Hamsini said, “I’m feeling cold. I want to go back inside.”
“Aww, please! I come out only once a year. Don’t spoil it for me!”
“You sound just like my mother,” grumbled Hamsini. “She too keeps saying that.”
“Then you should probably listen to her,” said Witch No. 16. “Some people work hard for other people. But when they want to have a good time, everyone shuts them up. Is your mother like that?”
“This is her holiday,” said Hamsini. She suddenly felt sorry for her mother. “We—my father and I—we keep grumbling.”
“See?” said Witch No. 16 sternly. “She does everything for you. And when she wants to enjoy herself, you grumble-grumble-grumble! Let this be a lesson to you. From an old blue witch who knows what it is to be shut up for a year.” Hamsini had tears in her eyes. She nodded silently.
In half an hour the witch had finished her fun and her energy as well. She looked tired and was almost turning into blue smoke once again. “My charge is gone, let’s go back,” she said weakly. “It’s time for the plug-hole.”
The morning after
Next morning they got up early and were ready to go.
As they drove away from the traveller’s bungalow, Hamsini said, “I had the best time in the world. Thanks, Mom!”
Her father said, “I like that! I do all the work and you thank her!”
Hamsini replied, “Have you heard of Witch No. 16 from the plug-hole?”
“Are you crazy?” asked her father.
“No, I’m not. But you should really get to know her. Then you’ll understand.”

Thursday, June 18, 2015

this is a piece written for a "little book"
called Serendipity brought out by artist Anuradha Nalapat
a couple of years ago

Writing events to life

we had a guru in the family during my middle school days. His legacy was a sense of preparedness. It left me aware of and open to the fact that everything is possible in life. Armed with the spirituality and wonder of life that he exposed us to I soon realized most of us live as partial human beings. We undermine ourselves. We either ignore or reject our potential. Actually, nothing is impossible. We just have to learn to connect with the universe we’re part of.
Years later, sitting at home with my family during power failures, I entranced my children by making them count to three and, lo! There’d be light. It soon became an accepted fact that I could do this, and
I was wise enough to attempt the feat only when I felt ‘sure,’ rather than make it a habitual display. I had a vague idea that it was this connectedness with the universe that made such things possible. You think of a person and he calls or lands up at your door. You meet someone who’s been out of your life for years, and then keep bumping into him again and again as if by design. A niece of mine dreamed every night for an entire week in vivid detail, and every single one of her dreams came true the following day! A serial dreamer, okay. But projecting your dreams into life? Well...
Sensitivity and a sense of self does strange things to you sometimes. You are aware that you- this being on two legs, seeing the world through two small pin- holes in your face-are living an entire life,
making things happen and impinging on other people’s lives. One day, you’ll close those eyes forever, and life as you know it will end. You look around and see the grand memorials, sky-scrapers, beautiful gardens and massive business empires and admire the sheer guts of people who could envisage and make such things happen during their lifetimes.

Is there a Grand Plan? Are you an invaluable part of that plan?

When I wrote my first novel, Lament of Mohini (Penguin,2000), there was a scene where
a member of a royal family goes into a Namboodiri home (or illam) and makes love to a beautiful married woman there. On the face of it, this is impossible. Namboodiri women (during the times I was talking of) entered a house as a bride and left it as a corpse. If ever they went out, they were
hidden by yards of cloth and an ubiquitous umbrella. So how would my hero meet my heroine? There was no way a stranger could meet a woman in an illam, much less make love to her! I thought about it and hatched a plan. There would be a Kathakali performance in the illam and the royal family members would be invited.

During the performance, my protagonist would have a headache and return to his room in the guest- house. There’d be a storm that night. Our man would fall sleep, get up after some time, venture out into the night to catch the rest of the performance, and lose his way. He’d wander into a bath-house where the woman was enjoying a wild, nocturnal swim. And they meet!

Months after the book was launched, I watched a travel programme on a Malayalam channel and they were talking of a true-life encounter between a woman in an illam and an outsider. The venue was a bath-house! Even the name of the woman was the same as my heroine’s. It left me stunned. I had never entered an illam before I wrote the book. I based my descriptions on a four-volume memoir of my wife’s great-uncle. When I actually visited an illam after the book was in the press, I found that my descriptions were eerily accurate, down to the last detail.

In the same book, there’s a scene of someone break- ing into a temple at night and making away with an idol. A couple of months later, in two separate incidents, temples were broken into and the idols stolen. One was in the temple in my father’s ancestral home, and the other in my wife’s family temple, both models for my fictional landscape!

After Lament of Mohini, I started writing Maria’s Room, though it was published (by Harper Collins) almost a decade later. There’s an incident in the police station in Goa where my protagonist had travelled on a writing holiday. He finds the corpse of his beloved among the grave-stones in an old
cemetery and rushes to the station to convince a sceptical inspector to accompany him there.

Two days later, I found myself sitting in a police station talking to an inspector about the body of my young niece who had drowned in the sea near their house. It was as if a momentary darkness from the book had seeped inexorably into my own life.

My wife says that I get so involved in my writing that I reflect every emotion I write about. She’s wary about my subjects and gets jittery when I write dark events. Invariably, some of it seeps into real life. My third play, Platform, lay waiting for some months before a director picked it up. The play was appreciated and drew some brilliant performances. During the cast party at the director’s house one rainy afternoon, the male lead (who’s now gone on to do feature films) took me aside. He said, “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for some time. It’s amazing, there’s such a marked resemblance between my life and that of the character you wrote for me. No one knows that part of me, but you’ve been so accurate!”

I patiently explained to him that I hadn’t written the character for him. I hadn’t even known who was go- ing to direct the play, much less who was going to act in it!

I have now got used to the fact that my writing may precipitate or reflect events without any help from me. I’ve come across people who’ve lived the lives and moments that I’ve described while sitting in the privacy of my room. I think creativity is a link between ourselves and the universe. What awakens in us might have gone to sleep in some part of the universe, or vice-versa.

Shreekumar Varma
Author, playwright, columnist and poet